that girl

"if people don't like you how do you know if you like yourself?" -will & grace, season 5

i'm that girl. i'm the friend. you know, the friend that asshole guys use to get close to the hot girl? i'm the other one. i'm that girl. in college i never got invited to parties in hopes that i will show up. i used to get invited in hopes that i will show up with my friend.

i'm intense. i think way too hard about things. there's always some underlying meaning or something people aren't letting me in on. i'm not for everyone and i don't want to be. okay, maybe a little piece of me wants to be but in actuality, i'm not. i'm the dumb girl that doesn't get it. i can't take a hint even when someone doesn't return my calls for a month and is clearly blowing me off (i'm still wondering why someone didn't just say, he's not into you!). and i get irriated when people are vague, even though on occasion i am. i'm always trying to get my poor husband to say exactly what he means even when i know what he means. "just say it!"

i'm a binge eater. don't tell me to have as much as i want because i will clean you out. i don't know when to stop. i'm awkward, weird, and i say inappropriate things. i listen too intently and make waaaaay too much eye contact. seriously, it freaks people out. i take things too personally. i mean DO NOT talk to me at a party because you WILL get sucked in and you won't find a way out. get out while you can is all i have to say. i don't mean it, i'm just that girl. i overstay my welcome. i'm usually loud and sometimes obnoxious. i can't help it, sometimes i just get excited even when there is no reason to be excited. i'm overly enthusiastic, overly eager. i'm impatient. i yell when i want to make a point and i always tell my boys, it's not you, it's me that's impatient. i'm sarcastic. who knew that sarcasm was condescending? i'm not mysterious, i'm literal and indiscrete. i'm sometimes loud and crass. i'll give you an example...

one day i was at this yacht club for brunch in Sausalito with my mother, step-father, husband, and children. a fabulous new french restaurant, Le Garage. gorgeous. just the type of place i love. so anyway, we saw the guy there that recommended the place. now i don't know this guy, only from my mother and i had a very brief encounter with him at Starbucks a few hours earlier. for some reason i'm at my loudest and crassest and most enthusiastic (great combination) when i'm with my mother. i mean, no matter what i do this woman makes me feel like i'm a million bucks. and when someone likes me or when i think i'm the life of the party, so to speak, oh fuggedaboudit. so anyway, he is sitting there and my mother starts to tell him what happened at the parking lot entrance when the parking attendant told us to help ourselves and not park there. he did it in the most elegant and discrete way too. so i open my big huge mouth to join in on the narration about how the parking attendant discretely told us to get out. and i mean i was loud. why i thought that was so amusing at the time i have no idea. in any case, after completely embarrassing myself i sit down to eat. now i know better than that but nevertheless, i did it. WHY?! it's almost as if i blackout when i go out. when i go to the store i have to have a very clear list, with side note reasons of what i'm getting and why i'm not getting something else, even if it is just milk.

i was the girl that could barely run the ten minute mile in high school. yeah, that girl... i'm usually way too serious. my poor neighbor, everytime he says something funny i have a tendency to squeeze every bit of humor out of what he says. when he saw me watering my lawn he said, "i just let my grass burn up." well, that was kind of funny. instead of laughing, for some unknown reason i tried to make him feel better about it. he didn't want to feel better about it. he was just being funny and i was just being a dork... boooring! i always get it afterwards though. i have a lot of those "what i should've said was..." moments.

due to all of these embarrassing things that i've learned how to do in my life, i've had to unlearn them. i count calories and servings in an effort to put some limits on what i eat. i workout. i'm standoffish in an effort to "take a hint" and not get loud and crass. i say no when people offer things to me. i make lists so i can control what i spend. i have little reminders all over my notebooks that children are children (isn't that a bit obvious?) so i don't yell all day long. i leave early if i show up at all and i try not to say too much. i try not to talk to too many people or engage too intently. i've learned how not to read too far into what people are doing all the time. i've had to control myself more than most. i admire people who are naturally mild mannered and discrete. how do they do it?! i have to work at these things. i'm oddly over-confident for someone who is so repellent. even though i humiliate myself a lot, i still think i'm fabulous. i've learned how to laugh at myself and at other people (although some people don't appreciate that very much). glory to glory or humiliation to humiliation?